Supersonic Annual 1977

In 1976 Fleetway Publications released an annual for the Supersonic TV programme. On the cover was the Bay City Rollers, David Essex and the star of the show Mike Mansfield. The book was obviously aimed at the teenage (female) market and featured, amongst others, Bilbo Baggins.

The pop star included are The Osmonds, Slik (a pre-Ultravox Midge Urge), David Essex, Mud, Rod Stewart with the Bay City Rollers being heavily featured.

The annual is mainly black and white pages of pictures and light-hearted text about the pop stars of the day. However, there were a few colour pages with higher quality printing for the centre section of pin-up pictures. One of which was of Bilbo Baggins.

The year on the cover of annuals were always for the following year of publication to give a longer shelf life. They were released for the Christmas market, when thousands were sold. This particular annual contained 96 pages (including the cover) and cost £1.30 upon publication.

In an article about pop stars predicting the future, Supersonic asked them to "Close your eyes 'n' imagine you're living 10 years on in the future! That's what we did ... and then we went along to see what the stars were up to after they'd retired from the pop scene!" Brian Spence was one of the stars, he said ...

Brian - Cooking Good

"Ere, cop hold of this!" yelled Bilbo's Brian Spence.

And a flying haggis came hurtling thru' the air!

"I'm a haggis nut!" Brian grinned.

"So I've started a haggis factory ... and I'm the chief cook! We used my own special recipe of course!

"I'm flogging them to the Americans too! The love ye olde Scottish haggis recipe ... it gives them a splash of the tartan spirit!"

The full page this piece comes from can be viewed by clicking on the picture of Brian.

Under the section called Dr. Pop, the question and answer pages where reader can have those all important questions answered. Like this one ....

Bilbo's Fiddler!

Q. "Why is Gordon Liddle of Bilbo Baggins called 'Fid'?"

A. Because it seems that his mates always called him Fiddle as a joke because it rhymed with his real name, Liddle. And so you get 'Fid' for short. All clever stuff!

The full page can be viewed by clicking on Fid's picture.

David's Killer Test!

Supersonic Annual 1977 asked , in another quiz section, to identify the personality associated with a group or artist. Or as they wrote "Even superstars need friends to lean on and mates for company. So if you are clued up and into some of the big names, you'll have also heard about these pals."

With the benefit of hindsight it is easy to laugh at the title of this article. Tam Paton has been accused of many things in his life but I don't believe anyone has ever called him a "Killer" before (and got away with it).

The Bilbo Baggins image to the left can be found in the centre pages of the Supersonic 1977 annual. The full sized image can be seen by clicking on the image.

Other images included Rod Stewart, Donny and Marie Osmond, Slik, Brian Ferry, 10cc, Mud, David Essex and The Bay City Rollers. But who cares about these other light-weights?

Page Last Updated: 4 March, 2010

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